HS2 - Government proposals, alternative routes and general discussion

[whole diary]

[Electric train]

A few stark facts about HS2^▸ (The next High Speed line(s)) -

30,000 Currently employed in its construction

2,700 companies are suppliers to HS2 from all 4 Nations of the UK^▸ (United Kingdom), many are SME


https://mediacentre.hs2.org.uk/news/latest-update-sees-hs2-workforce-rise-to-nearly-30-000#:~:text=In%20the%20last%20three%20months,workforce%20to%20just%20under%2030%2C000.

Scraping HS2 could cause the Government more harm than good, the price ticket is an easy target for certain MPs^▸ (Member of Parliament, or Mile Post (a method of measuring the railway in miles and chains from a starting point - usually London), depending on context) to cite, scraping it could actually hit their constituency even if HS2 is nowhere near them

[TaplowGreen]

A few stark facts about HS2^▸ (The next High Speed line(s)) -

30,000 Currently employed in its construction

2,700 companies are suppliers to HS2 from all 4 Nations of the UK^▸ (United Kingdom), many are SME


https://mediacentre.hs2.org.uk/news/latest-update-sees-hs2-workforce-rise-to-nearly-30-000#:~:text=In%20the%20last%20three%20months,workforce%20to%20just%20under%2030%2C000.

Scraping HS2 could cause the Government more harm than good, the price ticket is an easy target for certain MPs^▸ (Member of Parliament, or Mile Post (a method of measuring the railway in miles and chains from a starting point - usually London), depending on context) to cite, scraping it could actually hit their constituency even if HS2 is nowhere near them

It ticks all the boxes as an easy win for the Government to be scrapped - massively overspent, costs outweigh benefits, low levels of public support, environmentally it'll never be carbon neutral and one of the major justifications put forward for it (business travel), no longer exists in the new, post COVID world of hybrid working and virtual meetings.........they may well conclude that this is one ailing elephant which is longing to be put out of its misery.

"Stark facts" which I know won't be well received in this forum, but politically if there's a driver for a big headline grabbing saving to be dressed up as more money for the Health Service, Education etc it's the obvious target.

[IndustryInsider]

What do you think ‘scrapped’ would actually mean in reality, TG?  Do you think works will (or should) be wound down completely and cancelled?  Or will the places where construction is already at an advanced stage be salvaged somehow?

[Sixty3Closure]

I suspect it will be 'rescoped' until its pretty much London to Birmingham and most of the Northern parts delayed. That seems to be the theme so far with much of the original plan for the North (and Scotland?) falling prey to cost savings.

[TaplowGreen]

I suspect it will be 'rescoped' until its pretty much London to Birmingham and most of the Northern parts delayed. That seems to be the theme so far with much of the original plan for the North (and Scotland?) falling prey to cost savings.

That sounds very plausible.

[eXPassenger]

If the government is looking particularly hard at the next 5 years of expenditure than most of this spend for HS2^▸ (The next High Speed line(s)) is committed (or will need to be in order to finish London Birmingham).  The phases to Crewe, Manchester and E Midlands will have fairly low cash requirements in this period.

[IndustryInsider]

So, does anybody think it will actually be scrapped then? 

IMHO^▸ ('in my humble opinion') it will indeed be de-scoped to try and create some headline savings for the Government to announce, but over the years not much will be saved at all and we will end up with half a scheme and as a result about a quarter of the benefits. 

Lots of money spent and little to show for it.  Probably the worst result all round.

[Bob_Blakey]

The cancellation of any HS2^▸ (The next High Speed line(s)) work already in progress, which essentially means the London>Birmingham section, would be financial lunacy. In addition to the benefits mentioned there is also the matter of how much construction has already been completed e.g. 45% of the Chiltern Tunnel.

Instead of considering pulling the plug on important national infrastructure projects how about the government / civil service see what savings can be made from the c.£180B NHS budget given that only around £136B of it is used for direct provision and support of actual health services (the rest goes in the 'admin' bin). And do the same job on the DWP who managed to overpay £8.6B in benefits last year, £6.5B of that due to fraud.

For the avoidance of any doubt I want to see HS2 built in it's entirety as soon as possible. 

[Sixty3Closure]

So, does anybody think it will actually be scrapped then? 

IMHO^▸ ('in my humble opinion') it will indeed be de-scoped to try and create some headline savings for the Government to announce, but over the years not much will be saved at all and we will end up with half a scheme and as a result about a quarter of the benefits. 

Lots of money spent and little to show for it.  Probably the worst result all round.

I think this is the most likely outcome and will turn Birmingham into a suburb of London. Maybe not quite but all the benefit will be in the South East again which I thought the current government was addressing.

And whilst I don't want to stray into politics its a bit too easy to say cut admin/pen pushers etc. There's probably an argument for more investment in things like IT systems which have been neglected to avoid headlines about buying PCs rather than nurses. Many trusts are still on Window XP and have antiquated systems that will add a significant overhead to costs and efficiencies.

[JayMac]

Last story I can find online about NHS Trusts using Windows XP is from 2019. There are however a couple of stories from early 2022 mention Trusts still using Windows 7. Most Trusts are now on at least Windows 10.

[ellendune]

The cancellation of any HS2^▸ (The next High Speed line(s)) work already in progress, which essentially means the London>Birmingham section, would be financial lunacy. In addition to the benefits mentioned there is also the matter of how much construction has already been completed e.g. 45% of the Chiltern Tunnel.

Instead of considering pulling the plug on important national infrastructure projects how about the government / civil service see what savings can be made from the c.£180B NHS budget given that only around £136B of it is used for direct provision and support of actual health services (the rest goes in the 'admin' bin). And do the same job on the DWP who managed to overpay £8.6B in benefits last year, £6.5B of that due to fraud.

For the avoidance of any doubt I want to see HS2 built in it's entirety as soon as possible. 

Yes the cost of extracting themselves from the construction contracts they have signed up to would probably cost as much as much as letting them finish the work.  So London Birmingham is probably safe. 

[Electric train]

Network Rail remaining CP6^▸ (Control Period 6 - The five year period between 2019 and 2024) is already under pressure for cuts by the DfT^» (Department for Transport - about) and CP7^▸ (Control Period 7 - The five year period between 2024 and 2029) lets just say the DfT have informed Network Rail to manage their expectations

[TonyK]

And do the same job on the DWP who managed to overpay £8.6B in benefits last year, £6.5B of that due to fraud.

For the avoidance of any doubt I want to see HS2^▸ (The next High Speed line(s)) built in it's entirety as soon as possible. 

Speaking as a retired DWP compliance officer and former fraud investigator, I can hazard a guess as to how that happened. A lot of new people came into the scope of Universal Credit from the beginning of the pandemic. Staff were redeployed from other work to manage the influx. I would imagine that some of the more stringent checks were scaled down to avoid having a newly unemployed cohort without access to quick money. That is entirely understandable, to me at least, as the government made a decision to accept extra risk in the interests of speedier processing. This happened in other areas, like the furlough scheme and support for business, as well as DWP. My experience of the introduction of tax credits was that loopholes will always be exploited, then closed later. Using online methods without the safety barrier of individual identity verification increases those risks. Fraud will arrive by car, with prevention following on foot.

I envy my remaining colleagues the target-rich environment in which they will now be working, but not enough to ask for my job back. A lot of the money will be recovered, but a significant amount will not. It will provide a ready whipping boy, and an opportunity to distract attention from other more egregious mistakes, which see the country considering burning £4 billion worth of PPE^▸ (Personal Protective Equipment - safety wear) according to the London Economic, to make energy, among many examples to arise from the same root cause.

[TaplowGreen]

Strong words from Simon Jenkins in the Guardian....

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/nov/14/uk-finances-black-hole-hs2-vanity-project

[IndustryInsider]

And a strongly worded rebuttal of those words from Paul Bigland:

https://paulbigland.blog/2022/11/15/simon-jenkins-hs2-and-the-tunnel-that-never-was/